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Scam Alert


Brian

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Small business owners beware.

 

Interesting scam phone call just now...

 

an indian call centre calls from 'Eon'. There has been a billing problem and they couldn't connect to my smart meter to read it. Fair enough; so far so good.The problem is that he now confirms my business name and address; again so far so good as he has the right information. The trouble is that as I work from home the meter is not in the business name but mine. Alarm bells ring.

 

 

He offers to tell me the meter number but I declined, asking him instead 'for security purposes' for the last 4 digits of my account number. Which of course he didn't have so I politely terminated the call.

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I had a variation of this a few weeks ago. Caller claimed to be "representing your supplier" (he didn't say which - we have two, for different addresses). As our actual suppliers both get monthly readings online, he didn't get as far as "can you just confirm your bank details, sir". Interestingly, we had switched from Eon last summer.

 

Also had someone in British Gas uniform who insisted on taking meter readings (on his camera-phone!) & then "checked the wiring" by plugging in a cheap 3-neon tester in one room. Possibly just touting for work, as he went away when I commented on his tester & told him the boiler had already been serviced (NOT by BG). Still, it makes a change from the regular emails from "eBay" to an address they don't have.

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That sounds exactly like the sort of thing British Gas would do... They employ all sorts of dodgy tactics relying on their name to make people trust them. Yorkshire Water are going the same way, constantly sending me letters about signing up for "their" insurance policies. "Do you know if you had a water leak you'd be responsible for the cost?" Well yes I do actually.
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Do you know that as a categorical fact? Unless it's been proven to be the case (and I personally have no idea either way) then to make a comment like that on a public internet forum could be treading on dodgy ground.

The details were sold onto them by the low paid staff of the official EON contact centre; some of whom make a very nice additional sum from passing on your information....

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Yorkshire Water are going the same way, constantly sending me letters about signing up for "their" insurance policies.

For many years we've been getting what are probably exactly the same letters, in our case apparently from Thames Water, but actually from Homeserve, who appear to be a very successful company.

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in our case apparently from Thames Water

Thames water,the fine purveyor of customer details.Seems strange that the slightly wrong spelling of my name only used for thames water has been used to target junk mail,N power also like sharing my slightly diffidently misspeled name with others.

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Do you know that as a categorical fact?

 

Hard to say, I guess.... however read with interest a piece in one of the consumer computer mags where the columnist was taking his bank to task for passing on his email address to spammers. The bank protested innocence, but he told them he sets every single utility account with a unique email address... They were not forthcoming as to how it got into a third party's hands.

 

Whatever the route, it seems that such data isn't as safe as the firms make it out to be.

 

 

 

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The worrying question is, where did the scammer get such details...?

 

They might simply have been guessing.

 

Accurate lists of companies, their address and phone number are widely available. And such details are public knowledge by law. There are only a handful of business electricity suppliers in the UK. Make 1,000 phone calls and tell people you are from Eon and you're likely to be right 159 times (Eon having 15.9% of the market). Make 100,000 calls and you will be right 15,900 times. If only 5% of the people fall for it that still 795 companies that have been compromised.

 

If you were clever you could increase your likelihood of success by some geographical matching of supplier's share.

 

here is a tendency to think of spammers/phishers as stupid. They are anything but.

 

In retrospect I should have kept him on the line and seen where he went with the meter number. It looks like the full number is 21-digits but the unique part is only 8 digits. Maybe he had that; maybe he was going to give me a random number only for me to say it was wrong and for me to give him the correct one.

 

I guess the scam is for them to either switch your supplier without your permission (not sure how easy that is to do), send the business a letter from 'Eon', complete with the correct meter number and asking for future payments to go to a different bank account (theirs) or to simply create a clean salable list of business, their current supplier and their meter number.

 

My experience is that people like this generally try again in a couple of weeks to see if they get a different person on the phone. I'll try to get further into the scam next time.

 

 

BTW, Eon have confirmed it wasn't anyone from their organisation who called.

 

 

The details were sold onto them by the low paid staff of the official EON contact centre; some of whom make a very nice additional sum from passing on your information....

 

Unlikely. You might have missed the point that the meter here is not in the businesses name but in my personal name. What with the premises being my house and all that. So the fact that he called and was checking against the name of my business would indicate that he didn't have any information from my supplier.

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Do you know that as a categorical fact? Unless it's been proven to be the case (and I personally have no idea either way) then to make a comment like that on a public internet forum could be treading on dodgy ground.

The details were sold onto them by the low paid staff of the official EON contact centre; some of whom make a very nice additional sum from passing on your information....

 

 

I do, my details have been sold on by both EON & Halifax contact centre staff within the last 3 years. Local investigations ensued, multiple staff had their employment terminated.

Both EON and Halifax dealt with problems quickly and couldn't really have done anything to have prevented this from happening; but still.. y'know... some people are crooks and would sell their own granny...

 

 

Whatever the route, it seems that such data isn't as safe as the firms make it out to be.

 

 

The data is only as safe as the ethics of the people looking at the screen with the data on it, no amount of algorithms can account for someone with a camera phone taking a shot of the screen at their workplace and selling it on to scammers.

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I set up  3 lines with an IP phone provider, while I was still going through the settings I received a call from another phone/ISP trying to sell.

#I assumed at the time it was coincidence until it happened again when I expanded the original service with another 3 lines and another phone number.

I was tempted to get a third number just to see.

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